Neon Genesis

Correct me if I'm wrong but didn't the Romans burn the bodies of criminals after they were crucified?

There are some pizza restaurants that have it set up so you can call the restaurant up from your home to order a pizza and then they send someone to drive the pizza that they cooked at the restaurant to deliver it to you at home so you don't have to go out to the restaurant yourself to pick it up.

Speaking of unhealthy fast food, the last time we went to Burger King, I checked the calories chart they had up and they said their triple cheeseburgers had something like 1000 calories in it. I know I'm going to stay far away from that. It's like a heart attack waiting to happen.

There's a joke about anchovies in there somewhere. I'm guessing you never ate a taco??? Long John's randomly has a fish taco. x.X

I don't think we can ever know for certain what the historical Jesus taught and believed if he did in fact exist. I do think we can be pretty certain though of things Jesus most certainly did not do, though. If we presume the synoptic gospels contain sayings that date back to the historical Jesus, besides the obvious supernatural elements being debunked, I think we can be certain Jesus didn't know how to read or write if Jesus was just an ordinary peasant, so the whole story of Jesus reading in the temple is probably false. I think we can also be certain that the majority of the trial of Jesus and execution of Jesus is mythological like the stuff in the gospels where Jesus has lengthy theological debates with people while hung on the cross. Since we know the historical Pilate was a lot more cruel to the Jews than the way he's portrayed in the gospels, we can be certain that the stuff of Pilate trying to set Jesus free was all made up anti-Semitic propaganda.

In a recent episode of the Reasonable Doubts podcast, "Which Jesus?", they made the opposite argument, that the apocalyptic sayings of Jesus were the earliest teachings of Jesus and all the stuff from Luke's gospel about the kingdom being within are later additions to Q. You can get the episode here if you want to listen to it: http://doubtreligion.blogspot.com/2010/08/rd-extra-which-jesus.html

I haven't read Burton Mack yet but don't both Mack and Crossan believe Jesus was a Cynic sage?

Yet we all believe there was a real Herod who was the inspiration for this fake Herod's speech. This right here is an example of what was brought up earlier in the thread of someone's life being mythologized even though there was a real source behind it.

But then this could backfire and reinforce this belief some moderate Christians have that atheists are just as dogmatic and irrational as fundamentalists.

Robert Price actually is in the process of writing a new book on Paul in which he proposes Paul never really existed but that the early Pauline epistles were Gnostic writings and that Paul is actually Simon Magus.

Last Wednesday night in the bible study class at my parents' church, they were studying the parallels of Jesus being the lamb of God to the Passover lamb. The teacher surprisingly went through a whole list of similarities between the life and death of Jesus and the Exodus myth but nobody questioned the existence of Jesus even though they were able to find similarities in the story of Jesus with the story of Moses.

Is it just me or does pizza look like a vagina?

The Jesus Mythicist, Tom Harpur, made the opposite claim in his book, The Pagan Christ, that the Greeks never believed their myths to be literal fact and that it was the orthodox Christians who turned religion into "history."

That's rich that you complain when AM supposedly "name calls" you but you were insulting me and calling me ignorant earlier in the thread. Perhaps you should pluck the shard out of your own eye first? You're the one who sounds furious that we don't accept your conspiracy theory that Dec 25 being a pagan holiday should be such a huge shocking revelation to the rest of the word like it is to you even though the rest of the world has accepted it and is moving on with our lives.

Is it just me or do pizza deliveries never get their cheese cooked right? Like one time we got Papa John's and the cheese was just cold and clammy even though normally they're pretty good. The last time we got Pizza Hut, it was fine the first night we got it but when I had it for leftovers, I started vomiting it back up. It seems like at most pizza deliveries the cheese either doesn't taste like it's cooked well the first time or it makes me sick to have it for leftovers which irritates me since I like pizza. The only pizza restaurant around here who still cooks their pizza just right is CiCi's. They're still my favorite now because their cheese is always just right, it doesn't make me sick to eat it for leftovers, and I like the variety of different flavors they have. Does anyone else have the same annoyance with pizza deliveries that I do?

I understand and mostly agree with the Q gospel theory most biblical scholars put forward. I understand that the similarities between the synoptic gospels point to an earlier source that likely served as the proto-type for the canonical gospels. But even if there is a Q gospel, how do we know that it contains the recorded sayings of the historical Jesus? Let's say it was the Gnostic Christians who won the religious battle over who gets to be a "true" Christian and the Gnostics had destroyed all the copies of the synoptic gospels. How would we have been able to determine that the synoptic gospels contained the authentic sayings of the historical Jesus if the Gnostics won and became the orthodox Christians? Would scholars have then presumed that the Gospel of Peter and Thomas contained 18% of the historical sayings of Jesus and we would be debating the historicity of the gospel of Peter?

You are turning a mountain into a molehill. I don't know how many more ways you want me to restate the plain fact that many Christians and most scholars are fully aware Dec 25th has its roots in pagan mythology and this is no big shock to anyone but you apparently.

Let's try it like this.

Robert Price is a biblical scholar who holds to the multiple messiah theory, but if we're applying Occam's razor and admit there is some historical basis behind the myth, then to me the simplest solution is one messiah rather than multiple.

This thread reminds me of the South Park episode where Cartman goes into the future where everyone is an atheist and makes fun of Cartman for using God's name in vain.

My mother is for some reason a fan of Ellen yet she still believes gays are sinners trying to take away America's Judea-Christian values.

The point remains that the early Christians celebrated Jesus' birthday at different times of the year. Even after the Roman government adopted December 25th as the official date, not all Christians adopted the day. The Puritans of the American colonies rejected worship of Christmas as being pagan and as I said before, Christian denominations today like the Church of Christ also reject the celebration of all religious holidays. Again, I don't see what point you're trying to make here. Dec 25th is not mentioned anywhere in the bible. Not all Christians celebrate Dec 25th as Jesus' birthday and all scholars who believe in the historical Jesus are aware of the pagan origins of Christmas, so I think you're trying to make a mountain out of a molehill that is not shocking to anyone else. You're setting up this false dichotomy that either the entire bible must be literally true or else none of it is true. John Dominic Crossan is the co-founder of the Jesus Seminar which was formed for the purpose of trying to discover who the historical Jesus is. If you're seriously trying to claim Crossan is a Jesus Mythicist, you have clearly never actually read Crossan.

The only Christian theologian I know of who believes in the Jesus Myth hypothesis is Tom Harpur who is an Anglican priest and the author of the book, The Pagan Christ. Does anyone know how reliable his scholarship is?

You didn't read the full quote, did you? It said Dec 25th wasn't chosen as the official date until the 300s, decades after the life of Jesus. You have posted absolutely zero evidence that the early Christians primarly celebrated Jesus birth on Dec 25th before it became the official religion of Rome other than cherry picked quotes of Crossan to make him look like a Jesus Mythicist when he is no such thing.

Sounds like polyamory to me.